This means that EVERY PERSON IN THIS FAMILY’S COMPUTER HAS DIED WITHIN THE PAST THREE MONTHS. So maybe it’s the Three-Month Period of the Dead Computer. I guess I shouldn’t have brought the Chinese Zodiac into it; I apologize; the lunar calendar is clearly in no way responsible for the condition of these computers. More likely the problem relates to voodoo.

I have double-backups of everything because I’ve been obsessive about that recently – my last manual backup was the 27th, and I just checked and my Carbonite seems to have been working fine. I’m pretty sure that some kanji flashcards and MP3s are the only thing neither of them would have caught, and the MP3s are on my phone’s SD card. THANK GOD I AM ANAL-RETENTIVE.